Christopher Kane admits working with gold for the Olympics Closing Ceremony was "challenging".
The designer was given the task of dressing supermodel Stella Tennant for the event to mark the end of London 2012 last night (12.08.12) and he says using gold was something he wasn’t used to.
He said: "I’ve never worked with gold before, so it was challenging. I used chainmail in my fall/winter 2012-13 collection, but in a gunmetal silver, so I felt it would be great to create that suit in a really fluid drape using gold chainmail – which is really quite a crazy fabric to work with. It’s metal, but we had to look into getting a light base – so it’s all aluminium, which is so light and wearable. Because it was for the Closing Ceremony, I decided to contact Swarovski – who make such an incredible crystal mesh, which we then jigsawed and integrated together. It must have taken a week to complete – at least 80 hours. We had to unlink each metal ring and reattach it. It was a really timely process."
Christopher also revealed how he wanted Stella to wear a suit rather than a dress for the fashion segment of the show, which also included Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Georgia May Jagger.
He told vogue.co.uk: "It’s such an amazing platform for the brand, having billions and billions of people watching – that’s another reason why I wanted to do something different, instead of a dress. I want people to think: ‘Wow, who designed that?’ I was hoping that the Swarovski crystals under the lights would just blind people!"